Gardens and Opera

AA: This past Friday we went to Florence for the last time and visited two different Medici gardens. The were able to meet up with a man who is perusing his doctorate degree in horticulture. He showed us around a few of the main areas of the gardens and pointed out different plants that are very applicable to our lives! One of the first places we walked around was a small garden filled with real jasmine, lavender and different kinds of herbs. We then went up into another section of the gardens to see the pond where water once flowed from and irrigated the rest of the gardens. The view from up there overlooked a large portion of Florence and it was beautiful! We came back down and spent a lot of time looking at the citrus plants. The terra-cotta pots that the plants were in where the biggest pots I've never seen! Apparently, they weigh over a ton!   We were able to spot  a mutation of one of the plants that produced a fruit that was a mix of lemon and orange, the slices alternating throughout the fruit! It would have been so interesting to open it up and see the inside of it!

 Afterwards we walked over to a smaller palace that belonged to the Medici family and got to see more Italian style gardens that had for the most part stayed as close to the original design as possible! We were able to go inside the palace and take part in a short tour which I thought was really fascinating! They had most of the original furniture still in tact and still in the same location as it has always been! Each room had a different feel/theme based on who spent the most time there. We also were able to see a statue of Venus that was supposedly really rare to see being that she traveled all overt the world and was seldom in her rightful place at home.

From there we wrapped up the tour pretty quick because it was well past lunchtime and everyone was fading pretty quick, but our wonderful host didn't forget to tell us about internships that are available! I just might have to do a little more research on that!

After we got back from Florence we ventured onto Verona were we were able to try spritz, get rained on, see the opera Aida, take cool pics with the Juliet statue at her house and get a nice morning jog in all before we left to go to Venice! We had almost a whole 24 hrs in Venice to ride a water taxi, spend a few hours in Murano, have a nice dinner, see St. Mark's basilica and get utterly lost! But that's ok! I wouldn't have spent my last weekend in Italy doing anything else!

Veggie Tales

CRM - This past weekend, our last weekend in Castiglion Fiorentino, all of my friends went to the Dolomites. Instead, I ended up taking a 6 hour train by myself from Verona back home. Sounds boring, right?

Well, it wasn't. It was actually wonderful.

One of my favorite things about train travel across Italy is that you see so many different things. The terrain changes between every town it seems like. There is never a moment when I feel bored or unentertained. The entertainment is the scenery all around me!

When I got back to Castig, one of my local friends was waiting for me with his vespa. He ended uo driving me through Tuscany, which was a completely different (and better, in my opinion) experience than traveling by train. We rode all the way up to the very top of one of the hills, and up there was a big park. I felt like I was about to go camping or something, because a bunch of Italian families were up there picnicking and playing. It seemed like the kind of park my family would've pitched a tent in back home.

Valentino's family was there too, celebrating his father's birthday. It was such a neat experience geting to celebrate with a local Italian family. We sang happy birthday in Italian and immediately after my arrival, his aunts and uncles shoved all kinds of Italian food in my face to try. It. Was. Awesome.

One of my favorite things that I tried was a type of pickled green tomato that they ate as a side salad. It was so yummy! I love tomatoes. I liked them back in America but being here in Italy, my affection has grown and grown. The produce here is always so fresh and delicious. I'm going to miss all of the assorted fruits and vegetables that they have here!

A Perfect Weekend

CRM - The weekend before last, my friends and I took a trip to Cinque Terre. It is the place I ‘ve been looking forward to seeing the most and let me tell you, I was NOT disappointed. Cinque Terre is absolutely, stunningly beautiful!

Before we made it to the coast, we woke up early on Friday and took a train to Pisa. The only real reason why we wanted to go there was to take a picture with the leaning tower. I was surprised to see that the rest of the city seemed to be pretty dead. They had a ton of shops and tourist-y things to do but not enough people there to do them. It was so strange! Either way, I enjoyed getting to take a picture with the tower. I mostly just laughed at how funny other people looked while trying to pose with the tower. It was pretty hilarious to see all the poses. 

After Pisa, we had another two-hour train ride to our stop in Cinque Terre. Once we started to see the ocean from the windows of the train, everyone started getting especially restless. We were ready to be swimming and laying out in the sunshine! The water was the bluest water I’ve seen in Italy yet. It was gorgeous. All the colors were bright actually, from the water to the smallest flower on the sidewalk. I felt like I was inside a rainbow.

We got to our hotel – it was actually more like one huge beach apartment – and immediately put our bathing suits on and headed to the beach. We spent the rest of our day lying by the ocean and catching the last bit of rays before the sun went down.

The next day was our first full day in Cinque Terre. My friends and I woke up early again and went on a hike through the towns. The hike was one of my favorite things that we’ve done so far on this trip. It was really hard at times because we’d walk uphill for what seemed like forever but even so, the hike was completely worth it. The views were amazing. I had no idea we had walked so far up until I got the chance to look down. The boats and houses along the ocean kept getting smaller and smaller. We could see everything! 

During our hike, we saw lots of plants. I remember seeing a ton of lemon trees terraced into the side of the mountain. Cherry trees were popular as well. I was so amazed at how the farmers would be farming literally on the side of a mountain! There were flowers everywhere, all different kinds, but some that I recognized as characteristic of Italy, like poppies, for example. I wished that Dr. Leo or my friend Keith were with us so that they could explain more about the plants we passed, like they did in the Roman botanical gardens.

Once we hiked to Monterosso, we ended up buying a beach chair and a strawberry daiquiri and laying out for about three or four hours. It was a perfect day, and a perfect weekend!

Garden Party

CRM - This past week, our class took a field trip to Rome. It was so fun! Our time there was jam packed with things to do and places to see, and I loved every second of it.

One of my favorite places that we visited was the Vatican garden. I had been to the Vatican many years before, but I don’t remember ever touring the garden. I think I would have remembered such beautiful landscaping and plants! I wish we had more places like that in Texas.

Every color in the Vatican garden was so bright. I wanted to take pictures of everything I saw. My favorite feature of the garden was a crest that they had made out of different colors of flowers. It was so intricate and perfect and I still have no idea how they can shape plants to form something like that.

My other favorite feature was the rose garden. I wish we could have gotten to walk through it in the evening because it was scorching hot in the afternoon. But the rose garden had a big fountain in the middle of it and the water was ice cold. I took off my shoes and stuck my feet in the fountain, as well as washed my face with its brisk water. Instantly, I was comforted and refreshed. 

The Vatican garden wasn’t the only garden we visited in Rome. It wasn’t mandatory, but Dr. Leo took me and a few of my classmates to some botanical gardens during our free time one day.  I LOVED THE BOTANICAL GARDENS. Because I went with many horticulture majors, it was so fun to be able to walk around and them point out different things about different plants. I learned lots of fun facts that I had never even heard of before! For example, my friend Keith taught me that there was a certain cactus that you could break open and use the fibers inside as string if you ever needed to stitch something up. Also, there was another cactus that produced bright purple fruit that you can eat. Keith picked it off, carved off its outer layer of skin, and I was amazed to see something that looked kind of like the inside of a plum. It tasted like a plum too! I really enjoyed getting to learn a lot of new things there about horticulture.

Borromeo Island - The Land of the White Peacocks

On our first free weekend, a group of us went to Lake Maggiore and toured all the way up to Lucarno, Switzerland, but I’m focused more on Lake Maggiore and, more specifically, the Borromeo Island inside Lake Maggiore. Our travel agent forgot to give us a discount, so instead she gave us free travel to the island and it was well worth it. On the island there is a gigantic Borromeo palace and our tour guide said it was one of the most beautiful and ornate palaces in all of Italy and after seeing so many of them while on this study abroad program, I would definitely say he was right. Everything in the palace was extremely detailed and intricate from the floor to the ceiling to the plates that were used for serving to the door handles. They also had high-vaulted ceiling which added to the immenseness of the palace and the master bedroom was amazing because the second the person sleeping wakes up, they get a perfect view of Lake Maggiore. Then we toured downstairs and that was the most ornate section of the palace because the rooms were cave-like and was completely made of small stones, so they must have used hundreds of thousands of stones in order to finish construction for those rooms. They generally used those rooms during the hotter part of the year as the stones were cool to the touch and there was a nice breeze flowing through each room. Now, the best part of the entire island was the terraced, Italian-styled garden that contained 10 layers total. We saw an ample amount of flowers and trees that decorated the garden and there was an enormous fountain that drew your gaze when you first entered the garden. Once walking up the first staircase, the garden opens up and has a symmetrical portion that held white peacocks, which I thought was awesome because I had never seen anything like that before in my life and they came within a couple of inches of you. To the left of here, was a small pond that held many ducks and water lilies. Climbing up the stairs adjacent to the fountain, we reached a small stone clearing and was the highest point of the island. From here, we overlooked a symmetrical garden with a fountain centerpiece and could see how the various terraces affected the look of the garden and had an extraordinary view of the entire lake that left me speechless. If anyone travels in this area, I definitely recommend trying to visit this island as it is well worth it.

Stay classy Castiglion,

Quinten Plumer

Small Town Love

CRM - One of my all time favorite field trips that we have taken so far is our trip to Pienza and Montepulciano.  Both places being in the heart of Tuscany, I was amazed at how beautiful my surroundings were! It seemed like outside the towns there were barely any houses and I loved that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such vast farmland in my life. For miles and miles there were nothing but bright green vineyards and crops.

In Pienza, we walked around an old mansion that belonged to Pope Pius II, who was born there and commissioned the redevelopment of the town in 1462. What was so cool about that house wasn’t the inside, however, but the outside. The garden was absolutely beautiful! And the views! So breathtaking. I can’t imagine waking up to that every day and it being normal. I don’t think I would ever get used to it.

Our next stop, Montepulciano, was even more satisfying. Built on top of a hill, Montepulciano also had an incredible landscape view. But my favorite part about that town was the winery that Dr. Leo took us to. It has been around for hundreds of years, and creeping down into its dark caves (because the winery is underground) felt like I was going back in time. The barrels that the wine was being fermented in were HUGE!

After we toured the winery, we had a wine tasting upstairs in a brightly lit room. There were long tables for us to sit at, with plates of bread, different meats, and cheeses to accompany the different wines that we were about to try. The food was so yummy, and it was such a cool experience learning how to properly taste wine. They taught us to swish the wine around in the cup, smell it, and how to sense where each of the flavors of the wine would be most potent in certain places within our mouths. I’m not much of a red wine fan – I like white wine much better – but even so, I loved every minute of the wine tasting. Except for the dessert wine. Woo, that stuff is way too sweet for me!! All in all, I like visiting the wineries because it puts everything that Dr. Leo taught us about wine into perspective.

"Not all who wonder are lost"

This weeks highlights (Includes church update):

• Wore my new shoes and not just fell, I CRASHED to the floor and got a ballin bruise
• Went to Assisi which is the most beautiful place in the world
•  I saw St. Francis’ crypt and heard about five minutes of mass in English!
•  Left my passport in my room and missed the train, ended up having a beautiful morning to   myself

• Second train to Verona was booked for the wrong day, so we train hopped on the regional trains all the way there
• Opera got postponed an hour and a half due to a torrential downpour, which we fell victim to

• The Venice hotel lady was not the nicest, but I got reunited with my best friend! 
• Went to mass in St. Mark’s basilica and had a lovely dinner date with my bestie on the canal in Venice followed by a water taxi ride

• Had a terribly hard music final but didn't really care because I am in Italy
• Basically I still love it here but I am ready to go home

 Hort Highlights:

• On our last trip to Florence we went to two really pretty gardens and the amounts of lemon trees we saw were absolutely endless! I got to take some fallen lemon leaves and a piece of a lavender plant home with me(:
• We also got to tour an old mason with old paintings of the gardens that we learned about in class so that was very neat! 

Things I’ll miss:

• The geography
• The religious shrines and statues on every corner
•  The architecture and the history
• The gas stations that are actually really nice

Things I wont miss:

• People who are a fan of cutting you in line
• Expensive meals out
• The drivers (but lets be real, they are scary everywhere)

Things I’ll try not to take for granted in America:

• Free toilets
• Free water
• Free grocery bags

Words I’ll never forget:

• Andiamo
• Ragazzi
• Alora
• Non lo so
• Focus

Well Italy, its been fun! Hopefully one day I will return! 

Ciao!
Katrina Zekulin

Lost

AL: Thursday morning brought another trip to Firenze (Florence). When we arrived we headed straight for the Boboli Gardens with our horticulture professor as our tour guide. Not too far into our tour we came across a lemon garden and because I'm a little bit obsessed with all things lemon, I stopped with a few of my friends to take pictures. Next thing we know our group is no where to be found in this maze of a garden. Panic starts to set in as we search for our group and after about 10 minutes of searching we ended up at the exit of the garden (which we were unaware of) and then couldn't get back in. With no wifi, cellular data or map we found ourselves lost in Firenze. We walked around for about an hour before Julia, our own gelato connoisseur, recognized a gelato shop that was famous for having real gelato and being the best in Florence. By real gelato I mean well that, real gelato. Apparently lots of gelato shops in very touristy areas add in a bunch of extra things that make the gelato pile up high and become kind of fluffy looking, but real gelato shouldn't be piled up high and is a lot thicker. We stopped in and the reputation of the gelato shop did not disappoint, best gelato I've had yet! After enjoying our cold treat Julia recognized where we were based off the gelato shop she had looked up before we left for Florence.

 

Cinque Terre

AL: Early saturday morning we woke up and began getting ready for our hike between all the towns. Unfortunately, because of recent landslides we couldn't hike through the first two towns so we started in the third, Corniglia. Corniglia is a tiny town with a population of 240 people! The town was incredibly cute though and we found this darling cafe to have breakfast in before our hike. The employees were so sweet to us and made us all feel so welcome. Once we had energized ourselves we started on our hike to Vernazza, the fourth town. The hike between the towns was pretty rigorous but absolutely breathtaking. I felt like I was walking through paradise. Everything around us was so green and full of life, not to mention the gorgeous view of the Mediterranean sea that we constantly had. Vernazza is known for it's picturesque views and pebble beaches which we took full advantage of but taking all the pictures we could on the way in. We briefly stopped in the town to eat some fruit to cool us down before walking down to the pebble beach. To get to the beach we walked down through this cave-like entrance and then we saw all of the pebbles making up the beach. I have never seen anything like that before and it was so interesting and pretty. There were also these huge rocks that we got to climb on top of and of course, take pictures. Once we had our fill of Vernazza we continued our hike to the most famous of all the five towns, Monterosso. The hike from Vernazza to Monterosso is the longest and most difficult as well. However I will say it was beyond worth it. The hike is not only rewarding but such an experience in itself. When we first arrived in Monterosso we went to this lemon store that one of our friends had been raving about the whole way there. The small store was absolutely lovely and had all things lemon. They had freshly squeezed pure lemon aide slushes, limoncello, and all kinda of gifts and snacks. We enjoyed a few glasses of the incredible lemonade and bought some limoncello and were on our way.

Boboli Gardens & Much More:Italy Blog Number 4

K.A.R.

                                                 
Howdy! Wow, who would of thought that using howdy instead of ciao would begin to sound strange? After a jam packed week in Rome, followed by a weekend paradise in the Amalfi Coast, we found ourselves in the midst of the least active week in our trip. This gave me time to finally start my clean up duty on the piles of laundry and salty bathing suits that had been used for the past six days. Our only planned trip for the week was a day trip to Florence to see the Pitti Palace, Boboli Gardens, and the Uffizi Gallery. Considering that we visited the Vatican a week before visiting Boboli, the group as a whole may have ended up with a higher expectation for gardens. But to many of us, especially the horticulture students, the Boboli Gardens showcased itself as a superbly spacious and serene palace. The garden presented a well diversified, spacious, and symmetrical style garden that took over two hours to walk through (and could have taken much longer). The Boboli Garden had a much different approach to the way they used their landscape and as well as plant selection. It obviously didn't present the extravagant showing of lavash and abundance as the Vatican Garden does, but it did showcase a vast and full landscape filled with citrus, ornamental flowers, shrubs, and enough tree species to have a forestry major stuck there for days on end. This trip to Florence really helped solidify the city as one of my all-time favorites. Florence has a way of shining vicariously though its magnificent structures, luscious landscapes, historical relevance, and everlasting culture. I will be back in Florence and that is a fact.